


Adam and Mohinder Go On a Date

by aurilly



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: M/M, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-10
Updated: 2008-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is pretty self-explanatory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adam and Mohinder Go On a Date

Adam closed his cell phone and calmly put it back in his pocket. He went back to what he had been doing before it rang: shaking his head at the new and definitely not-improved Heart Publications headquarters. Adam's long-deceased old pal William Randolph Hearst, the founder of the company, would not have approved of the mangling of his beautiful 1930s design in this way. Neither would have Adam's friends back in 17th century China have approved of the building's negative feng shui energy. In short, it was [a blight upon the midtown landscape](http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/11/wondersoftheworld/image/11hearst3.jpg).

Honking horns interrupted these aesthetic and historical musings and reminded him that he was in the intersection of 57th and Broadway.

"Dude! Fucking move! Do you have a death wish or something?" a taxi driver shouted.

Adam shrugged and started walking again at a defiantly leisurely pace. The phone call had made him want to slow down and think about the evening before him. Things had changed, and he needed to think of a new game plan before he reached his destination. He entered the Time Warner Center and double-checked the location of Stone Rose, the cocktail lounge he was heading to. Adam took the elevator up to the fourth floor. When he got to the bar, even he had to whistle at the unparalleled view of Central Park.

"Hello, may I help you?" the hostess asked.

"I have a reservation, but I don't see my friend yet, so I think I'll pop into the loo for a second," he replied.

"No problem," she nodded.

The bathroom was behind the hostess's desk. Adam walked into the men's room, and there was Mohinder Suresh, relieving himself at a urinal.

This was new-_ish_. Adam didn't often get to see the goods that were potentially in store for him _before_ the actual date (although, to be honest; no one Adam decided he wanted was ever simply a _potential_). This was only the third time this had happened to him. The last time had been in 1904, when he had walked into his Viennese apartment and found his roommate pleasuring a beautiful Italian countess who was tied naked to the bed post. Although Adam had not appreciated Rolf using his collection of decorative cravats in this way, he was grateful for the introduction, and had taken her as his new mistress the next day. Adam eyed Mohinder even more appreciatively than he had eyed the stunning Miuccia back then. Mohinder was, on an objective gender-free scale, infinitely more attractive.

When he had looked his fill, Adam covered his mouth with his hand and coughed warningly. Mohinder gasped when he looked up and saw Adam surveying him.

"Oh shit," he mumbled. "You could have knocked!"

Completely unperturbed, Adam leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. He calmly watched as panic and embarrassment caused Mohinder to fumble clumsily with his zipper and buttons. "It's a swinging door to a public bathroom, my dear doctor. No one knocks. And anyway, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of," he finished with a lewd cock of his eyebrow.

"You're disgusting," Mohinder seethed, and finally succeeded in buckling his belt again.

"Now now, let's spare the insults." Adam just smiled.

Mohinder glared at him. "What are you doing here?"

"Just checking my hair." He looked at himself in the mirror. "Same as usual," he said to himself, with an exact split of relish and wistfulness.

Mohinder rolled his eyes. "That isn't exactly what I was asking, but---"

Adam sighed, but wanted to draw out Mohinder's (quite adorable) confusion a moment longer. "Let's start over, shall we? I'll leave the loo and will meet you at the front. We can pretend this little incident never happened."

"Fine," Mohinder spat, and Adam sauntered out. He counted to three in his mind, and, as if on cue, he heard the door swing and Mohinder follow him.

When he reached the hostess's desk again, Adam ignored Mohinder's presence dogging his footsteps and spoke pleasantly to the young woman. "Reservation for two, please, under Petrelli."

"Oh, yes. Your table is ready. Since both of you are here, I can seat you now," the hostess replied, and picked up two menus.

"We aren't together," Mohinder piped up behind him. "What a strange coincidence. You're having drinks with Peter here, too? I'm supposed to meet Gabriel. I'm not sure why, given how things ended---"

"Oh?" The hostess looked a little confused. Still addressing Adam, she said, "Well, you can either choose to sit with your friend until your companion arrives or---"

"No, we're both here. We're ready for you to seat us."

Looking around, Mohinder whispered, "Is Peter invisible?"

The hostess heard that and gave Mohinder a worried look.

Adam grabbed Mohinder by the arm. "No, stupid. _You're_ my date. Now come on before this lovely woman has you committed. Never mind him," he added to her as he dragged Mohinder towards the table and tried not to make a scene.

As soon as they were seated and left alone, Mohinder whispered angrily, "What is going on here?"

Fun as it was to keep Mohinder in the dark, the time for confessions had arrived. "Peter and Gabriel decided that we should get to know one another better. So, Gabriel told you he was inviting you out, and Peter told me yesterday that he wanted to meet me here. I received a phone call a few minutes ago informing me of the actual plan. I assume that this was executed mostly by Gabriel, because I can't really imagine Peter fooling me… ever. I'm sure you have a message, too."

Mohinder reached into his pocket, and sure enough, there was a notification of a missed call and new voicemail from Gabriel. He frowned. "So this wasn't about---"

"No, I'm sorry. However, cheer up and look on the bright side. I'm infinitely superior company to your brain-stealing, Tintin-coiffed ex-boyfriend. I'm sure you'll have a nice time," Adam confidently assured.

Instead of bristling at the implied insult to his ex, Mohinder simply looked at Adam in confusion. "You're actually okay with this?"

Adam shrugged. "Why not? This place has been on my list of places to try. And the little I've seen of you has intrigued me."

Mohinder still looked awkward. "I've never been set up before."

"Really?"

Mohinder held up a hand. "I know, I know what you're going to say. 'But I'm Indian.' Somehow I managed to avoid all that. I take it you have been?" he asked.

"It's been some time, but yes. The last time I can remember was back in 1832 in Russia, when in exchange for influence with the tzar, a nobleman wanted me to sire his daughter who was married to an infertile weakling."

"Did it, er, go well?"

"I didn't stick around for nine months to see, but she seemed appropriately pleased by the end of the evening." Adam leaned forward conspiratorially. "Although, for the record… Going forward, feel free to assume that I've done _everything_. You'll most likely be right."

"You're terribly obnoxious," Mohinder observed wryly.

"It's a fair assessment," Adam agreed. He smugly sat back in his chair and smiled knowingly. "But you like obnoxious. I'll bet it turns you on."

Instead of replying, Mohinder blushed and looked down at the menu. The waitress soon came back to take their orders.

"A glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon, please," Mohinder requested.

Adam looked at him askance. "A pomegranate margarita for me, please."

Mohinder let out a deep sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness. May I change my order? A lychee martini, please?"

The waitress didn't blink an eye. "Sure thing. Any appetizers?"

After ordering an assortment, Adam and Mohinder were left alone again. Mohinder cleared his throat and tried to revive the conversation.

"So, why were you with him?"

"Peter?" Adam shrugged. "I realized that we'll be stuck together on this earth, for better or worse, for a very long time, and it made sense to forge a connection with him now, while he was still relatively new to having abilities. The timing made him more impressionable and malleable. Plus, with all those powers, he can be quite useful."

"Well, if that was all, then why weren't you also trying to date---and by date, I mean manipulate---Gabriel? You'll be stuck with him, too, and he also has a lot of abilities." Mohinder sounded possessive.

"As I got to know him a bit better, I realized that we will probably never mesh well, and if so, perhaps it's the opposite case from Peter, where we'll have more in common as time goes by. And you were doing such a good job keeping Gabriel in check that I decided to shelve him for awhile."

"Well, I'm glad to have unknowingly been of service. Sounds convenient for you," Mohinder spat sarcastically.

"It was. Very. I've been meaning to thank you," Adam replied cheerfully. This only served to frustrate the other man more.

"I suppose it must have hurt to get dumped like that. No more super-powered boy-toy."

Adam ignored the tone and waved a finger, more interested in dispelling any accusations of rejection than in dispelling Mohinder's low opinion of his manipulative arrogance (hell, it was true, and Adam would be the last to deny it). "No, no no. I never get dumped."

"Oh, I'm sorry. How silly of me," Mohinder snarked. "Well, what _did_ happen, in your opinion?"

"I just meant that I was fine with it. I had been ready to move on. I had had quite enough of… Actually, I have a feeling you'll be able to commiserate with me. Peter was always 'hungry.'"

Adam had guessed correctly. Months of tension had been building, and now he had finally found someone who understood. "It was the same with Gabriel! I couldn't take it anymore. I was sick to death of listening to him whine about his goddamn hunger all the time! It got to the point where one day I told him to shut up and eat a fucking sandwich."

Adam guffawed. "Exactly! I started to be unable to take it seriously anymore. I could never tell which kind of hunger it was. We were out driving all day once---always driving, it never occurred to Peter to, you know, _fly_ or _teleport_ unless I reminded him… Anyway, he started whining about 'the hunger' and I turned to him and said, 'There is a rest stop forty miles from here. You aren't the only one who's hungry!'"

The waitress, who had just arrived at the table with their food and drinks, looked horrified when she heard only the last bit of Adam's rant. "I'm so sorry for any delay, gentleman. I assure you that the kitchen was working on your orders as fast as they could."

Adam and Mohinder immediately burst into simultaneous apologies. They were so charming that she went away blushing and simpering. As the waitress walked away, the two men looked at one another and burst into giggles. The intense gaze they shared intensified once the distraction of the laughter began to die down. Mohinder tried to prolong a wheeze so as to relieve some of the unspoken tension, but Adam simply looked at him even more smolderingly.

"Let's start, shall we?" Adam proposed, diving into the cheese plate but still not taking his eyes off Mohinder's face. "Anyway," he continued, "enough talk of other people. I want to know more about _you_. I've always had a feeling that there was more to Mohinder Suresh than a handsome face, a brilliant scientist, and a predilection for making bad decisions."

"Well… where would you like to begin?" Mohinder asked.

**********************************************

Three martini glasses, two highball glasses, a scotch glass, and a champagne flute littered the table, all empty.

"…and threatened her crown, poor thing," Adam was now slurring. Needless to say, not much had been shared about Mohinder, but neither of them seemed to mind. "Luckily, Marie-Antoinette never realized I was the thief. I spent the entirety of this scene hiding in the closet with the linen maid wearing nothing but my powdered wig, in which I had already safely hidden the jewels. That missing necklace led to her downfall." Adam looked smug, as he always did at the end of such tales. There weren't many people who knew his secret, and his centuries of life experience sometimes weighed upon him without anyone to share it with. Talking to Mohinder was very soothing, and Adam was starting to think it was something he could definitely get used to… that is, until Mohinder sighed.

"I have to tell you, Adam, interested as I am in your various escapades through time---you tell them fascinatingly, really you do---it gets a little awkward and more than a little pretentious. Can you try balancing it out with stories from more recent days? Something I can relate to more easily?"

Adam became quiet and subdued for the first time. "I don't have any stories. I was locked up for basically the entire time you've been alive."

Mohinder looked as though he'd been slapped. "Oh. Right. I'm sorry, I forgot. That was---"

"Don't worry about it," Adam interrupted too quickly.

There was an awkward silence as Mohinder drank in the ramifications of this concept (as well as the rest of his gin and tonic). He fidgeted with what was left of the appetizers. "There's a film about that, you know."

"What, _Rip van Winkle_? I read that book almost two hundred years ago."

"No, _Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery_. He missed 1969 to 1999. It's a comedy, but there was a poignant scene about exactly that loss of time. Matt forced me to watch it once when we were roommates, in an effort to convince me of why I would make a terrible secret agent."

Adam made a silent promise to himself to check it out. "Thank you for the recommendation," he said.

 

"He was English, too… the main character." Drunken Mohinder was still stuck on the movie.

Adam leaned forward dramatically and rested his hand on Mohinder's. "I'm going to tell you something I haven't told anyone since the Potato Famine."

"What is it?" Mohinder asked breathlessly, and quickly looked at their joined hands.

"I'm actually Irish," Adam confessed in a perfect brogue. "Mmm, it feels nice to slip back into the old tongue after all these years." And then he said something completely incomprehensible in Gaelic.

Mohinder's jaw dropped. "No," he whispered in shock.

Adam nodded. "It's true. Although, when you get to be my age, the first nineteen or so years of your life matter a lot less. But yes, I grew up on a farm near Galway."

"But the accent…" Mohinder began.

Adam shrugged. "I joined a British ship when I was twenty that ended up taking me to Japan. They wouldn't have taken a poor Irish farmer, so I impersonated a British merchant's son. And over the years I decided to stick with the accent, because I realized that it gave me more respect from the colonists and better luck with the ladies." Adam looked at the fingers Mohinder was unconsciously interlacing with his own. "And the gentlemen," he added.

"Me, too," Mohinder admitted.

"You, too, what?"

"My accent. It's put on. I had a terrible stutter as a child. One of my father's friends in the psychology department of the university advised me to try speaking completely differently in order to concentrate on something other than my fear of stuttering. So I patterned myself after Roger Moore. Then I went to boarding school in England, and everyone else had such a posh accent that I think I unconsciously cemented it in myself. I'm so accustomed to it now that I'm not sure I remember what my original voice sounds like. However, I started so young that I can't tell whether or not it's helped me with the l---" Mohinder was going to say 'ladies' but then spared a quick glance at their now stroking hands and finished with, "Er, in the romance department."

"Let me be the first to assure you that it has," Adam said brightly.

Adam thought he had seen everything worthwhile the world had to offer. The smile Mohinder now leveled at him was something he had never seen before, and, to add to all the other new experiences of the evening, Adam found himself speechless for the first time ever.

**********************************************

As they left the Time Warner Center a bit later, Adam absent-mindedly reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out some cigarettes.

"It's a nice evening. How about we sit for awhile in the new park?" The evening had gone well. Even without having to do the whole David Copperfield routine, it was very clear that Mohinder was fascinating, challenging, and everything Adam was looking for at the moment. The man was still holding back though, something which simultaneously frustrated and allured Adam.

"You smoke?" Mohinder asked, ignoring the question but moving towards the benches Adam was talking about.

Ever the gentleman, Adam began to put them back. "Oh, I apologize. I wasn't thinking. Peter grew not to mind and I have to say I forgot that other people---"

"No, it isn't that," Mohinder interrupted.

Adam rolled his eyes, but looked happier for what he took to be Mohinder's permission to light up. "Oh, I see. Look, Mohinder I know you probably feel that it's your professional duty to---"

"Just fucking give me one," Mohinder snapped, reaching impetuously for the pack.

This was intriguing. As they sat down (very close, Adam was pleased to observe), Adam studied the utter joy on Mohinder's face as he rolled the cigarette around in his fingers. Adam thought to himself how nice it would be to get Mohinder to make that kind of blissful, satisfied face because of something _else_.

"Here," he said out of the corner of his mouth. He leaned into Mohinder, who had just inserted the cigarette into his mouth. He smashed the two brands together, lighting Mohinder's with the flame from his own. They remained staring, their faces separated only by the two cigarettes, for longer than necessary.

Mohinder finally broke away and removed the cigarette from his mouth after a long inhalation. "God, that's good. It's been so long," he sighed as he breathed out.

"I have to say I'm surprised, doctor. I didn't have you pegged for a smoker."

Mohinder took another happy drag, and then elegantly leaned back. Relaxation shone out of his eyes. Instead of replying, he blew perfect smoke rings at Adam. In an effort to always be the most impressive person in the room---or the park, as it were---Adam blew even more perfect smoke rings through Mohinder's ever-enlarging ones. But Adam caught Mohinder staring longingly at his pursed lips, not at the rings.

"I thought nothing surprised you," Mohinder said softly.

Adam had to admit to being taken aback, but Mohinder carried on smoothly.

"I quit only a couple of months after I started… years ago in undergraduate. But I've been thinking recently that that I'm much more likely to die from being irradiated, or sent into a vortex, or teleported into a whale's stomach… _who even knows_. Lung cancer isn't likely to carry me off before something more drastic does. So just maybe…" He trailed off, still enjoying himself but obviously not completely convinced even by his own rationalization that this one-time relapse was something he should continue.

Adam saw this as an opportunity to push his suit. "I wouldn't worry too much. Either way, you have me. A ready-made cancer curing factory."

Mohinder shrugged with faux-innocence. "But who's to say you'll be around when I need you? I have no abilities, no personal influence over world leaders---"

Adam smiled. "I trust you can think of _something_ to make it worth my while."

Mohinder narrowed his eyes seductively. "Oh, I have a few guesses."


End file.
